Wayne C. Wolsey Macalester College St. Paul. MN 55105
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Faculty Renewal Programs at a Liberal Arts College
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A personal perspective
Macalester College is a liberal arts college of approximately 1750 students located in the Twin Cities of St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minnesota. The college has a full-time faculty of about 120 and a 5%-person chemistry department. In common with other similar institutions there is currently little turnover, and faculty tend to become stagnant unless occasionally exposed to new stimuli. Traditionally, faculty renewal has been accomplished through sabbatical leave programs and foundation-supported leaves such as those funded by the National Science Foundation through the Science Faculty Professional Development and COSIP (College Science Improvement Program) programs. It was my privilege to spend such a year in the laboratories of Professor Therald Moeller a t Arizona State University during the 1971-72 academic year, supported in part by a Macalester COSIP grant. Upon my return from that sabbatical leave, I learned that Macalester had received a grant for faculty renewal under the direction of Professors Charles Green and Walter Mink from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Money from this grant was to he used to support partial leaves (usually % time) for one semester to work with another faculty member a t Macalester in an Auditor-Consultant relationship, or to allow a faculty member to explore life in the "real world" by serving as a Faculty Community Intern with some metropolitan-based organization. The former type of partial leave might he typified by a member of the physics department who had a course reduction to allow him to audit a course in Indian Philosophies. The philospher than audited a physics course, Contemporary Concepts. The two then team-taught courses such as Modern Physics and Asian Metaphysics, The Philosophical Implications of Modern Physics, and The Edges of Science. Other pairs of Auditor-Consultants involved such interdisciplinary combinations as a physicist and a musician, an English professor and a geographer, and a mathematician and an economist. All participants found the cross-fertilization of ideas from the new disciplines to be very stimulating. My role in this program was serving as a Faculty Community Intern with the Water Quality Laboratory of the Minnesota State Health Department. One of my teaching areas is analytical chemistry, which was a minor area in my graduate study. Since I had never worked in any analytical laboratory, I felt that I could add something to my analytical chemistry course through this experience. Consequently, I spent one day a week during the fall semester of 1974 observing and participating in the routine analyses, ranging from fluoride determinations by specific ion electrode and pulse polarographic analyses of several metal ions to radiochemical analysis of vegetation and fish. The collaboration with this analytical group had led to my offering of an Interim Term class during the month of January in Environmental Chemistry and the placing of Student Interns a t the Minnesota State Health Department. Also, I hecame a member of the Environmental Quality Committee of the Minnesota Section of the American Chemical Society. An interesting joint effort of that committee and the Twin City Round Robin Program (a group of water analysis laboratories interested in inter-laboratory quality control) was the prep-
aration of a "White Paper" in 1978, "An Assessment of the Credibility of Data From Minnesota Water and Wastewater Laboratories." other Faculty Community Interns gained practical exptricnce at S I I C agencies ~ as the Minneapolis lnsritutt of Art, rhe Alrnn~apolidTribune, Northern State* Power Company, and the hlinnesotn Environmentnl Oualitv Council. A mathematician, Professor Wayne ~ o h e r t swho , served with Northern States Power Company, subsequently applied for and has received National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Participation Program grants for students to do summer research & mathem&icalapplications of operations research in local industries, businesses, and apencies. All of these community connections have been of benefit to Macalester in many ways. A second type of faculty renewal became available shortly before the time of my second sabbatical. Macalester had received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Professor Ernest Sandeen, Project Director) to enable faculty members to deepen knowledge in their own disciplines and to broaden their qualifications in fields allied to their own. Curriculum improvement was a maior thrust of the local committee in screening grant applica.ps)rhology, rt,cwlogy, biology, spweh and commuthis situation. n i c ~ t ~ mforeign , lanyungrs, philoscqhg, linguiztics. and Whether it be called faculty development, renewal, vitality, computer science. or whatever, these programs are certainly healthful for an (3) "Ways of Knowing" is organized around problems which institution. Faculty maintain a more active interest in these scientists, philosophers, and artists have approached from efforts if they are actively involved in them. If any reader is different paints of view. The course will fwus on ease studies interested in more particulars of any of the programs dein the development of science in order to show what is humanitns and what is scientio both in the sciences and the scribed a t Macalester. feel free to contact me.
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850 1 Journal of Chemical Education
